The Contempt Ladder

[Darth_Payn]

I'd have a better idea about this Flappy Bird business if I knew what game it was accused of ripping off.

 

[Requia]

Ha ha, it's funny because hardcore gamers are terrible people.

It's funny because CoD players are mostly casuals.

 

[RavenTail]

Oh the irony, the sweet ham fisted irony. Also, I like to point out that just about everyone buys something like what they already have. Not just the "filthy casuals" You already have XCOM UFO Defense, why do you need Enemy Unknown? It's the same thing.

You've got your logic aimed at the wrong target. The last of the original series of XCOM came out in 2001. Fans wouldn't see another XCOM game hit the shelves until 2012 with Enemy unknown.

Call of Duty games have been coming out yearly since at least 2007.

So really you shouldn't ask: "Why buy a game based on one that came out more than a decade ago?"

But rather: "Why buy a game based on one that came out last November?"

 

[wAriot]

To the defense of the average CoD or Madden fan, those games take more manhours to craft correctly and CoD at least is in the gameplay department a very smooth rollercoaster ride if nothing else. Well it was the last time I played a CoD game which was MW2.

Not every CoD is really THAT bad. BO2, for example, is pretty enjoyable and relatively innovative.
Ghosts is utterly terrible though, specially on PC. Thanks, IW!

 

[Vivi22]

Hell, people laud indie games as the second coming, but literally every other indie title is a...you guessed it - a 2d platformer with 8/16 bit graphics.

Most games don't sound that innovative if you just distill what it is down to the simplest genre description possible. Portal was just a first person game with puzzle elements. It was also one of the most innovative and original games ever made.

Not saying that there isn't a lot of unimaginative shit in the indie scene because there is, but there's unimaginative shit in every level of this industry and every other quite frankly. And whether or not a lot of really bad games exist is rarely the point people are trying to get at.

 

[Quantum Glass]

It occurs to me that I've somehow been conditioned to shun certain games and embrace others, regardless of their quality or how fun they are.

I'm not entirely sure how to feel about that.

Which is oddly fitting, now that I think about it.

 

[Czann]

Madden is the classic example and has been for a loooong time.

 

[CM156_v1legacy]

Weirdly enough, I'm rather sure I've seen this formula for a comic before

Person A talking to person B saying several criticisms about game C that could also be applied to the Call of Duty series. Person A then proceeds to buy the latest Call of Duty game with no sense of irony and we as the audience are intended to think that person A is an idiot and wrong.

 

[Dirty Apple]

So everyone is sitting somewhere on the ladder of comtempt, and hating everyone below himself.
And everyone thinks he's sitting at the top, because nobody looks up.

And all we get out of this are varying degrees of hate, woohoo.

I don't know if a ladder is the appropriate analogy here. Ladder inherently implies that there is a top somewhere looking down on everything else. I'm thinking contempt wheel makes more sense here. Everyone thinks they're on top when in reality they're on the same axis.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

"patience, they will all burn soon"

 

[ThunderCavalier]

So... can someone honestly explain to me the appeal of paying $60 to get what is, essentially, a refurbished, polished, and tweaked version of the Multiplayer with some new bells and whistles added every bloody year?

You could get away with saying that, for instance, the cost of BO2 can be justified by the changes to the Multiplayer being relatively extensive (changing up loadouts themselves, as opposed to the type of gun attachments you can put on) and the Single-Player not being as absolutely wretched as CoD games tend to be, but the Infinity Ward line seem to have been stagnating pretty bad since MW2.

And I honestly don't get why people keep lining up to pay another $60. So you can play with your friends or something? ... Chances are you might already have the older version of the game - why not play that and save yourselves $60 instead of dropping a little above half a hundred for very minute changes?



... Then again, Madden has somehow managed to survive to this day, so maybe I shouldn't be talking.

 

[Piorn]

So everyone is sitting somewhere on the ladder of comtempt, and hating everyone below himself.
And everyone thinks he's sitting at the top, because nobody looks up.

And all we get out of this are varying degrees of hate, woohoo.

I don't know if a ladder is the appropriate analogy here. Ladder inherently implies that there is a top somewhere looking down on everything else. I'm thinking contempt wheel makes more sense here. Everyone thinks they're on top when in reality they're on the same axis.

Maybe it loops, and every stereotype has another stereotype that hates it, creating an endless paradoxical spiral where everyone is "below" everyone.

 

[Rastrelly]

Oh the irony, the sweet ham fisted irony. Also, I like to point out that just about everyone buys something like what they already have. Not just the "filthy casuals" You already have XCOM UFO Defense, why do you need Enemy Unknown? It's the same thing.

Errrr... No. It's actually quite different on each level. Mechanics-wise it's two absolutely unconnected games. But all FPS and lots of RTS are really the same indeed.

 

[Rastrelly]

Since you seem to actually played the original. Can you give me a more detailed example of the changes.

Well, quite simple. For old game. First - no inventory. Second - no time points. Third - veeery limited gunplay (remember - you'd pick amount of shots and aiming quality). Global economy was much more interesting, you could actually make business on selling items you produce. For second game. Muuuuuch smaller squad size, absence of additional bases and skyrangers, and so on. On the other hand in new XCOM we have a cover system, entirely different movement system (2 points - one to run, one to shoot, with shot ending turn) and great emphasis on customizing soldiers with perk tree. It's kinda hard to find any actual similarities when you come down to level of how the game actually works.